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AMERICA IS UNDER A DICTATOR:Obama Administration Putting Government Monitors In Newsrooms/Venezuela in chaos/Ukraine apocalyptic riots /Hopkins Is Building Google-like Database of Children’s Brain Images and more signs of JESUS’s soon return

The FCC is launching a new study, taking upon itself the task of deciding what news the public “needs” to hear, versus the news the public wants to hear. The agency will conduct a “General Population Survey” that will “measure community members’ actual and perceived critical information needs.” Got that? What you think (perceive) you need to know is different from what the government says you need to know. Next, the FCC will send monitors to newsrooms across the country who will ask questions regarding the “philosophy” of the newsroom, inquire about possible conflicts between reporters and their bosses, and even determine how much influence each individual has in deciding what to report. Does that kind of government inquiry sound familiar? Are we not less than a year removed from an IRS apology for inquiring about the internal workings of conservative groups? More

Four couples suing the state over Idaho’s ban on same-sex marriage are asking a federal judge to rule in their favor without a trial, contending the facts of the case and recent federal court rulings elsewhere make it clear that Idaho’s marriage laws violate the Constitution. The defendant in the case, Gov. C.L. “Butch” Otter, also is asking the judge for an immediate ruling, contending that states and not the federal government have the right to define marriage and that same-sex marriages would harm Idaho’s children. Both sides made their arguments Wednesday in legal briefs filed in Boise’s U.S. District Court. Also Wednesday, nine same-sex couples in Colorado filed suit in Denver challenging their state’s ban on gay marriage. Federal judges in Utah, Oklahoma, Kentucky, Virginia and Ohio already have voided part or all of those states’ bans on same-sex marriage, a point raised in the Idaho lawsuit, and the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in June that the federal government must recognize valid same-sex marriages.More

A Christian rights organization in the United Kingdom has promised to mount an attack on what its chief calls “Big Brother politics writ large” – a law adopted in Scotland that would assign a legal overseer to every child when it is born. “It is clear this bill breaches European rules through its attack on the family. Ordinary Scots should be very afraid,” Colin Hart, director of the Christian Institute said after the parliamentary law was adopted on a 105-0 vote. “We have no option but to challenge this illegal law all the way,” Hart said. “This is a dreadful extension of the state’s tentacles into family life.” The law requires the National Health Service to appoint a health worker to be a “named person” with overseer responsibilities for every child. At age 5, the responsibility for that “named person” would be shifted to local governments. According to the institute, “The state-employed named person would be able to share information with a wide range of public authorities and may intervene without parental consent.” More

A woman in the UK has given birth to a healthy baby boy after being urged to obtain an abortion amid bleak prognosis that left him with only a ten percent chance of survival. Rachel Collins, 30, says that she was told by her doctor that she had oligohydramnios, meaning that there was too little amniotic fluid surrounding her son. If the baby did survive birth, he said, the child would not have any kidneys nor lung function. “The doctor didn’t mince his words,” she told The Daily Mail. “He said, ‘This baby will die. the best thing you can do is terminate it.’” But Collins refused to end her son’s life. “There was no way I was terminating my baby,” she said. “I thought, if he’s not meant to be, I will miscarry. But I knew I had to try.” As Collins was already keeping a diary about her pregnancy, she decided to continue to journal about her journey and the thoughts and emotions that accompanied it. She titled her journal Alfie: Born to Fight, Ready for Battle—Our Miracle Baby Boy. “[The doctor] said, ‘Your baby has a ten percent chance of survival. You should expect a miscarriage. The baby will survive the next two weeks at best; you should have a termination,’” she wrote in her August 6, 2013 journal entry. “I wanted a second opinion. Something in my heart was telling me we could do this. I wasn’t going to give up hope—a 10% chance was not zero.” More

An Australian Christian missionary was arrested this past Sunday by North Korean authorities for distributing Gospel literature. John Short, 75, who has lived in Hong Kong for 50 years, was arrested in his Pyongyang hotel, a day after arriving in the North Korean capital. “[John] was carrying Korean literature on his person and that could be the reason, but I don’t know,” John’s wife Karen told The Associated Press in an early interview. According to later reports, Short’s travel partner Wang Chong stated that Short left Gospel literature in a Buddhist temple during a tour. Authorities had been later notified by the local tour company Short was traveling with since the action breaches North Korean laws of spreading religious materials. More

The Seattle Police Department is preparing to purchase a new facial recognition software program with a federal grant from the Department of Homeland Security. Set to be purchased next month, the software will reportedly be used to scan and compare surveillance video to the city’s mugshot database. With the city facing mounting opposition for several other privacy issues, police were quick to claim that the software would only be used when surveillance video of a suspected crime was obtained. “An officer has to reasonably believe that a person has been involved in a crime or committed a crime,” Seattle Police Asst. Chief Carmen Best said. Despite reassurances from the city and police, surveillance-weary residents pointed to the city’s continued abuses with surveillance technology. “I think the Seattle Police Department have a well earned reputation for distrust by the public,” privacy advocate Phil Mocek said during a city council meeting Wednesday. One group in particular, the Seattle Privacy Coalition, compared the city’s actions to the the federal government’s never-ending domestic surveillance rollout.More

The Home School Legal Defense Association has asked its supporters for “5 days of prayer” that the U.S. Supreme Court will hear the case of the Romeikes, a German homeschooling family that the Obama administration is attempting to deport. The Supreme Court will meet on Friday and announce its decision on Feb. 24. On Monday, Feb. 17, HSLDA sent a message to its supporters asking them to pray each day this week, Feb. 17-21. ”We ask now if you will join us, beginning today, for five days of prayer? Let’s join together and pray that the court will agree to hear HSLDA’s appeal and that God will move in the hearts of the justices in favor of the Romeike family,” the message says. Homeschooling is illegal in Germany. The Romeikes fled to the U.S. in 2008, with the assistance of the HSLDA, after they were threatened with the possibility of losing custody of the children. They were initially granted asylum by a U.S. district court. That decision, though, was appealed by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement. The U.S. Justice Department sided with ICE in that and subsequent cases. More

After having now analyzed over 1,000 foods, superfoods, vitamins, junk foods and popular beverages for heavy metals and other substances at the Natural News Forensic Food Labs, I have arrived at a conclusion so alarming and urgent that it can only be stated bluntly. Based on what I am seeing via atomic spectroscopy analysis of all the dietary substances people are consuming on a daily basis, I must now announce that the battle for humanity is nearly lost. The food supply appears to be intentionally designed to end human life rather than nourish it. My lab has uncovered scientific proof that substances are intentionally formulated into dietary products to drive consumers mentally insane while causing widespread infertility, organ damage and a loss of any ability to engage in rational, conscious thinking. These toxic substances are being found across the entire food supply including in conventional foods, organic foods, “natural” products and dietary supplements. This goes far beyond the mere contamination of foods with heavy metals — a subject which is grave all by itself. Rather, this is about the intentional formulation of toxic substances into products consumed by the masses on a regular basis.More

At least 67 people have been killed in violent riots in Kiev, the Ukrainian Health Department has stated. Doctors working on Kiev’s Independence Square, however, claim that as many as 70 people were killed on the rioters’ side alone on Thursday. The death toll in the most violent wave of clashes between the rioters and the police in Kiev is likely to increase, as there are conflicting figures coming from the Health Department, city officials and the opposition. As many as 550 people have been injured, according to official estimates. The surge in the number of victims comes as both armed rioters and the police are now using live ammunition in clashes. Many of the protesters and police officers killed or injured since Tuesday sustained gunshot wounds. Police have officially been allowed to use firearms in accordance with the law by an order of the Ukrainian Interior Minister. More

My husband and I had been married only a few years when he came home from work one day to say he had been suspended for online pornography. I was then pregnant with our second child. It felt like an atomic bomb had fallen on me: All that I thought was safe and stable in my life imploded, and everything around me went into slow motion. Eighty percent of Christian men admit to struggling with an addiction to pornography. I had been a fairly good girl my whole life. I never dreamed that my marriage would become part of a statistic like this. Honestly, in order to reflect reality, the statistic should be much higher. Pornography is the church’s dirty little family secret that no one is allowed to talk about. My husband was one of many men in today’s society who was exposed to pornography by the age of 6. Initial exposure to pornography is often not by choice but rather in the form of advertising or through another person’s influence. Pornography is presented to men or boys as entertainment and, like addiction to gaming systems, its imprisonment comes as a total surprise. Pornography’s iron fist is stronger than self-will or any counseling tactic. More

Critics of a proposed Federal Communications Commission study that would send researchers into newsrooms across America say the new chairman’s vow to tweak the plan doesn’t go far enough — with one leading media group calling on the agency to scrap the study entirely. ”Where it really needs to go is onto the trash heap,” Mike Cavender, director of the Radio Television Digital News Association, said in a statement. The FCC drew the ire of free-press advocates and lawmakers after proposing a “study of critical information needs,” which one dissenting commissioner said would let researchers “grill reporters, editors and station owners about how they decide which stories to run.” GOP lawmakers warned the program essentially would become the “Fairness Doctrine 2.0,” in reference to a long-abandoned policy requiring broadcasters to provide what was deemed balanced coverage of major issues. More

Why are so many young adults in America living with their parents? According to a stunning Gallup survey that was recently released, nearly three out of every ten adults in the United States under the age of 35 are still living at home with Mom and Dad. This closely lines up with a Pew Research Center analysis of Census data that looked at a younger sample of Americans which found that 36 percent of Americans 18 to 31 years old were still living with their parents. That was the highest level that had ever been recorded. Overall, approximately 25 million U.S. adults are currently living at home with their parents according to Time Magazine. So what is causing all of this? Well, there are certainly a lot of factors. Overwhelming student loan debt, a depressing lack of jobs and the high cost of living are all definitely playing a role. But many would argue that what we are witnessing goes far beyond temporary economic conditions. There are many that believe that we have fundamentally failed our young people and have neglected to equip them with the skills and values that they need to be successful in the real world. More

The Environmental Protection Agency recently imposed restrictions on wood-burning stoves that will deal a blow to rural Americans who rely on wood to heat their homes. Critics charge that the rule changes were enacted following pressure from environmental groups. The EPA tightened restrictions in January on the level of fine airborne particulate emissions that wood-burning stoves can emit, from 15 micrograms per cubic meter to a maximum of 12 micrograms. The EPA restrictions would ban the production and sale of the kinds of wood-burning stoves that compose 80 percent of those currently in use in the United States, Forbes reported. More

Ukraine’s Interior Minister confirmed Thursday he had signed a decree to issue service firearms to police officers and authorized the use of live ammunition. The statement came in the wake of numerous reports from Kiev of both anti-government protesters and police officers being shot dead in ongoing clashes, in which at least 50 people have reportedly been killed. Until this week, Ukrainian riot police had been using non-lethal weapons, such as tear gas, water cannons and rubber bullets, against protesters in street demonstrations that have been taking place around Ukraine since November. “Law enforcement officers have received service firearms and will use them in accordance with Ukraine’s law on police,” Vitaly Zakharchenko said in a statement posted on the ministry’s website. “The Interior Ministry demands that extremists hand over their weapons and return to peaceful protests. Those opposition leaders and activists who are capable of soberly evaluating the situation should dissociate themselves from the radicals and refrain from supporting them in future,” the statement reads. At least 10 police officers have been killed in the clashes, the authorities said Thursday. Most of the officers killed reportedly also bore gunshot wounds. RIANOVOSTI

Temperatures across the U.S. Midwest and Northeast will plummet through next week and the cold will linger through the start of March, said Matt Rogers, president of Commodities Weather Group LLC. For the Midwest and Great Lakes region, including Chicago, readings are expected to fall 15 degrees Fahrenheit (8 Celsius) below normal from Feb. 24 to 28, said Rogers, based in Bethesda, Maryland. In the Northeast, temperatures are forecast to be at least 8 degrees lower than the norm. “The overnight modeling mostly strengthened next week’s cold outbreak, especially for the Midwest, also for the Deep South and East Coast at times,” Rogers said. “We now have two days with sub-zero low temperatures for Chicago, which is impressive since the calendar is about to roll forward into March.” Below-normal temperatures in the high-population areas of the Northeast and Midwest boost energy demand as homes and businesses seek heat. Power generation accounts for 32 percent of U.S. natural gas use, according to the Energy Information Administration, the Energy Department’s statistical arm. About 49 percent of all homes use the fuel for heating. More

Iran and world powers agreed Thursday a timetable and framework for the ambitious and arduous process of hammering out a lasting nuclear accord by July 20 that satisfies all sides. Such a deal, if reached, should resolve the decade-old standoff over Iran’s nuclear drive, silence talk of war for good and help normalise Tehran’s strained international relations. After chairing “very productive” days of talks in Vienna, EU foreign policy chief Catherine Ashton said experts would meet in early March before political directors return to Vienna on March 17. ”There is a lot to do, it won’t be easy but we have made a good start,” Ashton told reporters, saying negotiators had “identified all the issues we need to address”. Iranian Foreign Minister Mohammad Javad Zarif wrote on his Facebook page that the parties “also agreed to hold several meeting on a monthly basis until late May”. More

Ukraine spiraled deeper into disarray on Wednesday as the government of President Viktor F. Yanukovych and several thousand grimly determined protesters, along with their supporters in Russia and Europe, faced off in a confrontation over the fate of this fractured country of 46 million. As measures of the turmoil, the authorities announced a nationwide “antiterrorist operation” to keep guns and power from what it called extremist groups, and they dismissed the country’s top general. But very late in the day, they declared that a truce had been reached with political leaders of the opposition, who confirmed that overnight. The party website of an opposition leader, Vitali Klitschko, said the opposition had received assurances that there would be “no assault” on the main protest site, though it was uncertain that a pause in the conflict would hold, particularly among more determined street fighters. More

California’s health care exchange promised potential customers they would have enough physicians to choose from. But some new enrollees, including an Alameda County woman, are discovering that their doctor choices are extremely limited. Julia Turner is surprised that she even has to search for a doctor. When she signed up for a policy through Covered California late last year, her long-time physician was listed as participating in her Blue Shield plan. It turned out; however, that he is not accepting patients with her Blue Shield policy, purchased on the Covered California exchange. When Turner called around to find someone else to treat her, she got more frustration. “The only doctors accepting new patients are urgent care clinics,” Turner told KPIX 5 ConsumerWatch. None of the doctors are located in the city in which she lives. Instead, Turner said, “They are in areas of East Oakland that have a lot of violence.” More

Dangerous chemicals contained in food packaging may leach into food and may cause long-term harm to human health, scientists are warning. In a commentary published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, a group of environmental scientists warn that the synthetic chemicals used in the packaging, storage and manufacturing of packaged and processed foods may even impact fetuses still growing in their mothers’ wombs. The scientists note that because so-called “food contact materials,” or FCMs, are a “significant source of food contamination,” consumers are “chronically exposed to synthetic chemicals at low levels throughout their lives.” And, they warn, too little is known about the exact impact synthetic chemicals have on human health, leaving consumers exposed to an unknown level of potential harm. “FCMs are a new exposure source in the sense that they have received little attention so far in studies concerned with human health effects,” the scientists write. More

last year, we reported that Israel was facing an over-abundance of water after seven years of drought. It would now seem such predictions were premature, with experts warnings that the coming year could see Israel up against yet another severe water crisis. The previous winter saw good rainfall, and the beginning of the current winter started much the same, leading Water Authority officials to put Israel’s large desalination plants on notice that their full output would not be required in the coming year. A massive winter snowstorm in early December (which is unprecedentedly early for snow in Israel) only bolstered predictions that Israel’s cup would soon be running over. But then came January and February, usually the wettest months for the Jewish state, and yet barely a drop of rain fell in most of the country. Little to no rain for the better part of seven weeks. More

Planned Parenthood has dispatched hundreds of workers across the country to sign up the uninsured for Obamacare. According to a report in The New York Times, the abortion-providing giant is paying about 400 workers $12 an hour to canvass and sign people up for the president’s signature healthcare law. The workers are approaching an average 18,000 doors a day in Arizona, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, New Mexico, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Texas. The Times explains that the movement to sign people up for Obamacare plans has taken the same kind of shape as the Obama presidential campaign turn-out effort: micro-targeting the uninsured. Enroll America, the group leading the effort to enroll people in Obamacare, generated lists of people, ranking their likelihood of needing insurance. More

Imagine, you’re in the exciting new 21st century. Civilization still exists on Planet Earth. Wall Street’s still in business. But you’re still asking: Why can’t we hear the next crash? Are we deaf? No. The warnings are always long and loud. So why can’t we “hear” them? In fact, it’ll get worse. Here’s why … Yes, crashes will keep coming: History lesson: The 1929 crash led to the Great Depression. On March 20, 2000 we warned: “Next crash? Sorry, you’ll never hear it coming.” Few listened. The 1990’s dot-com mania led to Wall Street losing $8 trillion in the 2000-2003 bear-market recession. Nothing changed. Another round of warnings roared from 2004 into 2008. Few listened. Another crash. Wall Street lost even more, $10 trillion. Through much of 2013, pundits warned how bad the market really was. Then in December the Wall Street Journal revealed that after 13 years in negative territory, Wall Street’s “Lost Decade” (which lasted from the 2000 crash to the end of 2013), finally broke even on an inflation-adjusted basis. More

China reduced its holdings of US Treasury debt in December by the most in two years as the Federal Reserve announced plans to slow asset purchases. US government bonds held by China – the biggest US creditor – fell by US$47.8 billion, or 3.6 per cent, to US$1.27 trillion, the largest decline since December 2011, Department of the Treasury data released on Tuesday shows. At the same time, international investors increased holdings by 1.4 per cent, or US$78 billion, in December, pushing foreign holdings to a record US$5.79 trillion. Yields on benchmark 10-year notes rose to 3 per cent in December, the most since July 2011, after Federal Reserve officials announced plans to begin scaling back the central bank’s bond purchase programme, designed to keep borrowing rates low and jump-start the economy. The prospect of tapering sent US government securities down 3.4 per cent last year, the first annual decline since 2009′s record 3.7 per cent loss, the Bank of America Merrill Lynch US Treasury Index shows. “The Chinese move to sell suggests central banks are becoming more wary of taking duration risk now with the Federal Reserve firmly into the tapering process,” said Aaron Kohli, an interest-rate strategist in New York at BNP Paribas, one of 22 primary dealers that trade with the Fed. “If China continues to sell again in the next month or two, then more worries will arise as to who will buy the country’s debt.” More

China has long trained for an amphibious invasion of Taiwan during military exercises but has expanded its training to include a similar attack on Japanese holdings in the East China Sea, according the chief of intelligence of the U.S. Pacific Fleet (PACFLEET). As part of China’s Mission Action 2013 exercise — a massive exercise between the all branches of China’s People’s Liberation Army (PLA) — the military trained for taking the Senkaku Islands, said Capt. James Fannell, deputy chief of staff intelligence and information operations for PACFLEET. “We witnessed the massive amphibious and cross military region enterprise — Mission Action 2013,” Fannell said at the West 2014 conference on Feb. 13 in San Diego, Calif. “[We] concluded that the PLA has been given the new task to be able to conduct a short sharp war to destroy Japanese forces in the East China Sea following with what can only be expected a seizure of the Senkakus or even a southern Ryukyu [islands] — as some of their academics say.” In the last year, China has increased the military activity has additionally increased provocative military actions in the South China Sea around the so-called Nine Dash Line — China’s expansive claim into the region in conflict with several other international claims. More

Iran’s President, Hassan Rouhani, on Wednesday said that Jerusalem should “be liberated from the yoke of Israel.” The comments were made during a meeting in Tehran between Rouhani and the Speaker or the Palestinian Authority (PA) parliament, Salim Zanoun, and were reported by the semi-official Fars news agency. During the meeting, according to Fars, Rouhani expressed the support of the Iranian government and nation “for the oppressed people of Palestine”, and called for the “liberation of the Holy Quds (Jerusalem) from the yoke of Israel.” “One of the wishes of the Iranian nation is liberation of the Holy Quds,” the Iranian President was quoted as having said, adding that he hoped “the Palestinian nation and the entire Muslim world will find a serious solution to this occupation through unity and integrity”. More

President warns Ukraine in the same manner as Syria, raising concerns over potential military action. Similar to his approach with Syria, President Obama announced today that the Ukrainian government would face “consequences” if it crosses “the line” in its response to the mayhem in Kiev. In his statement given during a summit in Mexico, Obama also claimed that “a large majority of Ukrainians are interested in an integration with Europe.” “I want to be very clear as we work through these next several days in Ukraine that we’re going to be watching closely and we expect the Ukrainian government to show restraint, to not resort to violence in dealing with peaceful protestors,” he stated. “We’ve also said we expect peaceful protestors to remain peaceful and we’ll be monitoring very closely the situation, recognizing that with our European partners and the international community there will be consequences if people step over the line.” More

People being forced to stand for hours. Prisoners feeding off of rats and snakes. Forty people forced into the same cell and made to crawl on their hands and knees. That’s the reality of life in a North Korea prison camp, as depicted by a series of haunting sketches included in a United Nations commission report this week. “[C]rimes against humanity have been committed in the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea pursuant to policies established at the highest level of the state,” the U.N.’s high commissioner on human rights stated in the report. “These crimes against humanity are ongoing because the policies, institutions and patterns of impunity that lie at their root remain in place.” The sketches included in the report, which come by way of Kim Kwang-il, a North Korean who claims he spent six years in a prison camp, are similar to drawings released a short while ago by another escapee. More

A well-established American Islamic group with direct ties to a radical Islamic leader in Pakistan has been investigated by FBI counter terrorism officials who said the group “extols membership to pursue a policy of jihad or holy war against individuals or groups it considers enemies of Islam, which includes the U.S. government,” according to recently declassified FBI documents obtained by a nonprofit organization investigating the group. Still, Muslims of America operates with impunity in the United States. Since 1982, members of the organization have been constructing living and training compounds in multiple states on large swaths of land. The group’s headquarters sits on 70 acres in rural upstate New York in what’s known as “Holy Islamberg.” Their leader, Pakistani Sheikh Mubarak Ali Gilani, whose group Jamaat al-Fuqra is the Pakistani sister group of Muslims of America, has continued to work to expand his influence in North America. More

Last week my column “10 Men Christian Women Should Never Marry” went viral. More than 1.2 million people have shared that message so far—most likely because so many single men and women are seriously asking for guidelines on finding a compatible mate. In response I received numerous requests to share similar guidelines for men who are looking for wives. Since I am mentoring several young men right now and have seen a few of them marry successfully during the past few years, it wasn’t difficult to draft this list. These are the women I tell my spiritual sons to avoid: More

In Venezuela, students have been killed while protesting against the government of Nicolás Maduro, who is jailing opposition leaders and just closed a television station that dared broadcast the demonstrations. Argentina is irresponsibly racing toward a dangerous economic cliff. The Brazilian economy is in recession and 2014 will mark its fourth consecutive year of subpar growth, as the country reels from its largest capital flight in more than 10 years. Is a decade of progress in Latin America coming to an end? For some countries, surely. But not necessarily for the entire region. Four nations are developing an initiative that could add new dynamism to Latin America, redraw the economic map of the region, and boost its connections with the rest of the world—especially Asia. It could also offer neighboring countries a pragmatic alternative to the more political groupings dominated by Brazil, Cuba, and Venezuela. More

We’ve survived the Mayan apocalypse and Y2K, but be afraid – the end of the world is coming…again. This time it’s the Viking apocalypse that is allegedly set to destroy Earth, with Norse mythology claiming the planet will split open and unleash the inhabitants of Hel on February 22. According to the Vikings, Ragnarok is a series of events including the final predicted battle that results in the death of a number of major gods, the occurrence of various natural disasters and the subsequent submersion of the world in water. The wolf Fenrir is also predicted to break out of his prison, the snake Jormungand will rise out of the sea and the dragon of the underworld will resurface on Earth to face the dead heroes of Valhalla – who, of course, have descended from heaven to fight them. More

DAYS OF LOT – A team of constitutional experts is blasting a Tacoma, Wash., high school for promoting a pro-homosexual agenda while censoring a pro-life campaign in the classrooms and hallways. The Thomas More Society‘s letter to Wilson High School officials condemned their decision to allow posters and events for a “gay”-straight alliance while refusing to allow similar posters and events related to the local Students for Life. “Public schools have a duty to treat all student groups equally,” said Peter Breen, vice president and senior counsel of the Thomas More Society. “Wilson High School’s current policy allows administrators to censor any messages they deem ‘offensive’ – in this case, any pro-life message – while allowing other groups broad freedom of speech.” Breen said the administration “is violating the rights of the students involved in Wilson Students for Life, who do not lose their constitutionally protected freedom of speech when they enter the schoolhouse door.” More

The first cabinet decision made under Iran’s new president, Hassan Rouhani, wasn’t about how to resolve his country’s nuclear dispute with world powers. It was about how to keep the nation’s largest lake from disappearing. Lake Oroumieh, one of the biggest saltwater lakes on Earth, has shrunk more than 80 percent to 1,000 square kilometers (nearly 400 square miles) in the past decade, mainly because of climate change, expanded irrigation for surrounding farms and the damming of rivers that feed the body of water, experts say. Salt-covered rocks that were once deep underwater now sit in the middle of desert. Experts fear the lake — famous in years past as a tourist spot and a favorite stopping point for migrating flamingos, pelicans and gulls — could disappear within two years if nothing is done. More

The Department of Homeland Security (DHS) is contracted to purchase 704,390,250 rounds of ammunition over the next four years, which is equal to a total of about 2,500 rounds per DHS agent, according to a January 2014 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report entitled Ammunition Purchases Have Declined Since 2009. “If DHS were to purchase all 704 million rounds over the next four years, and if they were used by 70,000 DHS agents and officers, it would be roughly 2,500 rounds per agent per year,” David Maurer, author of the GAO report, told CNSNews.com. “That would be higher than what we saw in past years at DHS and higher than the average annual number of rounds per agent or officer at the Department of Justice (DOJ),” he said. “The 704,390,250 number of rounds is like a ceiling or credit limit which DHS wouldn’t have to fully execute,” said Maurer. “It’s there to use over the next four years until fiscal year 2018, if DHS needed to purchase those rounds.” More

The Department of Homeland Security on Wednesday told airlines about a potential new shoe-bomb threat and urged them to pay extra attention to flights from overseas into the United States. Several officials familiar with the advisory told NBC News that “very recent intelligence” considered credible warns of possible attempts to attack passenger jets using explosives concealed in shoes. As a result, officials say, airlines will be playing extra attention to passenger shoes on flights to the US from overseas. Those passengers may also experience increased scrutiny in pat downs and full-body screening. The bulletin to airlines urges screeners to use the explosive trace detection swabs to check shoes that are worn and in carry-on bags. The officials say the threat information was not specific to any particular airline, country, or time. There is no indication of a specific plot, they say. But after assessing the information, the Department of Homeland Security advised airlines earlier

Wednesday of the possible threat and urged greater security scrutiny on U.S.-bound flights. More

With a major pattern shift in the works bringing warmer weather to the central and eastern U.S., an outbreak of severe thunderstorms is now looming starting Thursday – even in areas that still have snow on the ground now. A very strong low-pressure system will bring a large area of very strong winds just above the ground beginning Wednesday night over the central U.S., spreading east on Thursday. The system will also pull warm, moist, unstable air north from the Gulf of Mexico. These elements will set the stage for an outbreak of severe thunderstorms. A few strong thunderstorms may begin flaring up as soon as late Wednesday night over parts of Kansas and Missouri. The bigger threat develops Thursday and continues into Thursday evening in the Ohio Valley, mid to lower Mississippi Valley, and the western Gulf Coast states. The main threat will be damaging winds. However, a few tornadoes will be possible, both embedded within the squall line of severe storms, as well as in any discrete cells that can form ahead of the line, particularly Thursday afternoon and evening from southern Indiana to northern Mississippi and northern Alabama. More

UN chief urges rapid reinforcements for CAR

Syrian refugees in Lebanon speak to Al Jazeera

Why Is The Obama Administration Putting Government Monitors In Newsrooms?

(Matthew Clark) The Obama Administration’s Federal Communication Commission (FCC) is poised to place government monitors in newsrooms across the country in an absurdly draconian attempt to intimidate and control the media. –continue

World War 3 : Obama ‘There will be consequences if people step over the line’ (Feb 19, 2014)